Day: February 11, 2014

LFM Reviews Frontline’s Syria’s Second Front, Children of Aleppo

By Joe Bendel. You can draw a lot of conclusions about people simply from judging the groups trying to kill them. Most western observers are utterly baffled by the bedlam of the Syrian Civil War. However, it is pretty easy to side with the initial rebel groups who rose up against the Assad regime and now find themselves battling a virulently Islamist faction in the north, once the particulars of the conflict are established. This Tuesday, PBS’s Frontline broadcasts Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo, two boots-on-the-ground reports from Syria documenting the precarious state of the original, largely secular rebels and the dire conditions faced by sympathetic civilians.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is supposedly so extreme and violent, al-Qaeda wants to keep them at arm’s length. Presumably, they will patch things up if ISIS takes operational control of Syria, which is not outside the realm of possibility. They have little use for secular society and a special enmity for reporters, whom they are perfectly willing to execute on sight. Nevertheless, Muhammad Ali, a daring independent journalist with a memorable name, has infiltrated ISIS controlled territory with a team of Free Syrian Army aligned rebels.

When ISIS eventually leaves town, everyone is relieved to see them go. Frankly, many of the local citizenry are quite courageous expressing their hopes for a free secular democratic state. However, the prospects are rather iffy, even if the fractious rebel forces can unite against both ISIS and Assad. Second Front offers some cautious optimism on this score, but it is tempered by the shocking footage of the better organized ISIS brutally administering Sharia Law.

From "Syria's Second Front."

According to Children of Aleppo, an estimated 11,000 children have been killed in the course of the Syrian conflict. Most parents opted to shelter their sons and daughters outside the country. One FSA captain is a notable exception. He and his wife still live in their once fashionable Aleppo flat with their son and three daughters. The captain’s comrades are now like extended family to his girls, which would be almost heartwarming, if their familiarity with the sounds of war were not so tragically well developed.

Those who have seen Matthew VanDyke’s Not Anymore will also recognize his footage of a twelve year old protest singer, who just started performing for his camera as a shell landed nearly on top of them. Both survived, but she evidently now lives in Qatar. Frankly, VanDyke’s film is even more effective than the Frontline films at putting a human face on the Syrian civil war. Although it is now available online, interested New Yorkers can see VanDyke’s short doc on the big screen on February 28th as part of the 2014 Winter Film Awards. In contrast, Syria’s Second Front better establishes the ideological and geopolitical context for the various factions.

The one-two punch of last month’s Secret State of North Korea and the upcoming Syria’s Second Front make this Frontline’s strongest season perhaps ever. Both broadcasts represent solid investigative journalism conducted in countries that do not recognize press freedoms. Highly recommended, Frontline’s twofer of Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo air tomorrow night (2/11) on most PBS stations nationwide.

LFM GRADES: A-/ A-

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:37am.

LFM Reviews The Hourglass Sanatorium, Presented by Martin Scorsese

By Joe Bendel. Smuggling a censored film was a trickier proposition in 1973. Instead of a flash drive, you had to schlep cans of film. Nevertheless, Wojciech Has managed to convey his banned, mind-bending prestige production to Cannes, where the jury led by Ingrid Bergman awarded it the Jury Prize. While never explicitly political, it is easy to see why Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium would be too much for a risk averse Communist apparatchik to countenance when it screens as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on the novel and short stories of Bruno Schulz, Hourglass is never intimidated by the constraints of narrative. Józef is traveling to a remote sanatorium, where his lower middle class merchant father Jakub is a patient. Actually, his father is already dead everywhere else except the decaying sanatorium. Within the crumbling walls, the randy inattentive staff apparently has the power to roll back time to a point where his father is still living. Through the strange power of the sanatorium, Józef is able to revisit his past through his subconscious (or vice versa) for a series of chaotic encounters with his sort of late father. Or something like that.

You could debate just what Hourglass is until the cows come home, but no way, no how is it Socialist Realism. Meaning that densely ambiguous spells nothing but trouble for a professional censor. To make matters worse, Has chose not to soft pedal the main characters’ Jewish heritage while the Polish Communist Party was still engaged in its campaign of anti-Semitic purges. At times, Has even evokes images of the Holocaust, even though the work of Shulz (himself a fatal victim of National Socialism) predated WWII.

From "The Hourglass Sanatorium."

Good for Berman for digging Hourglass. It will not be to everyone’s tastes. However, it is visually stunning. The depth of vision Has employs with his swooping camera is truly dizzying. It might be heresy to suggest, but Hourglass could be that rare classic worth giving the 3D fixer-upper treatment. Ironically, the film authorities clearly opened the coffers during the production stage. The work of art director Andrzej Halinski is absolutely baroque, even decadent in an evocatively decayed way. Viewers may well wonder if Hourglass was an early influence on a young Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam.

Hourglass is an auteur’s film in just about every way, rather than an actor’s showcase. It is dashed difficult to forge an emotional connection with the audience amid all the trippiness, but at least Jan Nowicki looks convincingly lost as Józef.

Undergarments are rather loose in Hourglass, so parents should be strongly cautioned. More to the point, it is sure to raise questions with no objective answers. This is definitely high-end cult cinema, but those who appreciate extravagant set pieces and dark fantasyscapes will dive into the experience. Recommended for the adventurous and literarily inclined, The Hourglass Sanatorium screens this Friday (2/14) and Sunday (2/16) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 10th, 2014 at 12:28am.

LFM Reviews Easy Money: Hard to Kill

By Joe Bendel. When on work release, convicted cocaine smuggler Johan “JW” Westlund seizes the opportunity to get back to “work.” This was not always his world, but he will find there is no going back to the upright, respectable existence he once led in Babak Najafi’s Easy Money: Hard to Kill, which opens this Friday in New York.

There were a lot of casualties at the end of the first Easy Money film, but somehow Mrado Slovovic survived, despite being run-over by a car and shot at close range by Westlund. One might expect the wheelchair-bound hitman to hold a grudge, but he and Westlund bond when they become cellmates. It must be all that shared history. Once a promising business student, Westlund lent his analytical skills to an up-and-coming coke syndicate to subsidize his extravagant lifestyle. In retrospect, it was not such a great plan for the future. Trying to go straight, Westlund develops a game-changing stock-trading program, only to find during his first furlough his so-called partner has double-crossed him.

Slightly put out, Westlund chucks in the work-release song-and-dance, arranging to break Slovovic out instead. He might be paraplegic, but Slovovic is still one bad cat. He also knows the daily routine of the Serbian mob’s unassuming money launderer. While they work on their hasty caper, small time South American trafficker Jorge and lowly Lebanese enforcer Mahmoud are also making their desperate plays for survival. Naturally all three alumni from the first film will come together in some fashion during the third act.

Viewers should be able to readily follow Hard to Kill even if they did not see the franchise opener, but the constant parade of faces that are supposed to be familiar will be more rewarding to those who have. Regardless, HTK is slick, stylish, and strangely multicultural, but hardly in a way that embraces global fellowship. This is not a film that will have you humming “It’s a Small World,” but it might scare you straight, unless you live in Colorado, where these sorts of things are practically legal.

Joel Kinnaman, the star of AMC’s The Killing and the RoboCop reboot so coincidentally opening just before HTK, is suitably flinty as Westlund, but Dragomir Mrsic out hardnoses everyone as Slovovic, while still expressing his acute disappointment in himself as a father. Likewise, Fares Fares makes a compelling sad sack as the luckless Mahmoud.

Since Easy Money: Life Deluxe has already released in Sweden, it is a safe bet anyone who survives the second cut will be back to try their luck a third time. HTK does not break a lot of new ground, but the intriguing relationship that develops between Westlund and Slovovic elevates it above more routine Scandinavian crime dramas. Recommended for those who enjoy gangster films with healthy doses of violence and irony, Easy Money: Hard to Kill opens this Friday (2/14) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:19am.

Our Post-Zombie Future: LFM Reviews The Returned

From "The Returned."

By Joe Bendel. This is why we really shouldn’t demonize pharmaceutical companies. We might really need them sometime, especially in the post-zombie future. Medical science has developed a cure for newly infected zombies. Naturally, there is a catch. It depends on a protein extracted from the spinal columns of full blown, incurable walking dead and must be administered shortly after contamination. However, as treatment improves, there are fewer sources of the serum and more cases requiring it. This leads to an inevitable problem of scarcity in Manuel Carballo’s The Returned, which opens in Los Angeles this Friday.

You would think they would hardly notice an influx of zombies in Canada, but there is indeed a rabble rousing crowd of fear mongers making life difficult for Dr. Kate. She is the lead physician for her hospital’s “Returned” ward and a prominent fundraiser for synthesizing the serum. She also happens to be romantically linked with Alex Green, a Returned musician, whom she met while overseeing his treatment.

With stockpiles of the protein growing scarce, the mob is turning on the Returned and those who treat them. Things get really bad when a band of radicals attack her ward, making off with confidential Returned files. Already exhausting their black market options, the doctor and her hipster patient will soon be forced to take desperate measures.

From "The Returned."

Clearly, the market for zombie-related entertainment remains undiminished if even the post-zombie scenario of BBC America’s In the Flesh is subject to the old “homage” treatment. At least series writer-creator Dominic Mitchell gives viewers a fair number of old school zombie flashbacks. In contrast, The Returned is distinctly light in the shuffling horde department, but it takes its message of tolerance painfully seriously.

As a zombie film almost entirely without zombies, The Returned is bound to disappoint the majority of zombie junkies. Still, Emily Hampshire and Kris Holden-Reid make a ridiculously attractive couple who show flashes of chemistry in their scenes together. They are actually reasonably compelling when navigating the ethically ambiguous terrain of post-zombie (or maybe not so post) life.

To its credit, The Returned offers up a clever bit of business involving the Bela Lugosi near classic White Zombie (still underappreciated as the granddaddy of all zombie movies). Frankly, it is a better vehicle for Hampshire than Good Neighbors, so it might lead to more work for her down Hollywood way. Regardless, Carballo really should have dialed down the teaching moments and ratcheted up the action around the midway point, instead of going all in for angst. The Returned is a competent production, but it is already late for the party. For die-hard Canadian zombie fans, it releases this Friday (2/14) in L.A. at the Laemmle Music Hall, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:09am.